The safety of the occupants of an aircraft is of the utmost importance. Thus, aircraft manufacturers are constantly adding safety improvements to their aircraft. One of the recent aircraft safety improvements added to aircraft is a whole-aircraft ballistic parachute system. A whole-aircraft ballistic parachute is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,119, which is hereby incorporated by reference. According to Ballistic Recovery Systems, Inc., over 200 lives have been saved by whole-aircraft ballistic parachute systems. One embodiment of a prior art aircraft with a whole-aircraft ballistic parachute system is shown in FIG. 1. The aircraft 100 includes a fragile parachute cover 105. When the whole-aircraft parachute is deployed, a rocket fires through the cover 105 and extracts the whole-aircraft parachute from an opening under the cover. The rocket then tensions the parachute harness straps. Next, the whole-aircraft parachute partially inflates. The parachute is initially reefed by a reefing device, as shown in FIG. 3 of U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,119. Then, as shown in FIG. 4 and FIG. 5 of U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,119, the reefing device slides down the parachute suspension lines and allows the parachute canopy to fully open. After the whole-parachute inflates, the aircraft is lowered to the earth.
FIG. 2 shows a prior art whole-aircraft parachute harness. The forward straps 110 and the rear straps 115, both of which are made of a light but strong flexible material, such as KEVLAR™, couple the aircraft fuselage to a whole-aircraft parachute canopy (not shown) via the straps 120.
While the above whole-aircraft ballistic parachute system has saved many lives, the safety of aircraft occupants can still be further increased.